


Awaiting

by morrezela



Series: Werecat Series [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Mates, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Werecats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 14:36:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen has to have a very hard discussion with Jared about his biology</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awaiting

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: References to: werecats, non-con turning, questionable medical practices, dub-con mating of the ‘didn’t know’ variety, sad-ish ending.
> 
> A/N: This was written for Day Five of my 12 Days of Christmas meme. 
> 
> It is a sequel to Away and Adrift. I highly suggest reading both of those fics first.
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own.

Of the duties in life that Jensen had to perform, talking to his mate was not generally one he abhorred. As much as Jared’s upbringing had stunted his growth in all ways, Jensen loved him. His kitten was perfect and wonderful and amazing. Someday he would convince Jared of that, but until then he’d settle for being the best alpha a mate had ever had.

Normally being that best alpha had to do with Jensen being limitlessly patient and jerking off in the shower instead of a preferable place such as on Jared’s skin. Frustrating, yes, but not excessively so. His duties as alpha meant making sure that Jared’s physical needs were met and encouraging him to discover what emotional needs he wanted to fill first. It was about gently educating his young mate about his heritage and culture.

Sex was not usually mentioned beyond soft reassurances that Jensen didn’t need to have it. That even though Jared’s body was practically begging for it, Jensen understood that mind and body were not always on the same page. They did not need to copulate.

The subject that Jensen had to speak to his mate about was different. Just thinking about it made his skin itch with the need to shift. His tailbone wanted to lengthen and grow so that he could flick his tail in irritation. Of course that wasn’t the only thing on him that wanted to lengthen and grow, but Jensen’s wayward cock was the least of his worries.

“Jared, Beloved,” Jensen started out over dinner.

The look Jared fixed him with was one of exasperation. He was uncomfortable with Jensen’s fondness for loving monikers or ‘pet names’ as Jared called them. But he rarely voiced any displeasure over them. They were what Jared called his compromise point. They were the thing that he gave Jensen because they weren’t fucking on every available surface.

“If you’re starting with ‘Beloved’ instead of ‘Kitten,’ I’m not sure I’m going to like this,” Jared’s attempt at a joke fell flat when Jensen couldn’t make his lips smile.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Jared asked, heaviness filling his voice.

Jensen shook his head, but clearing his throat took four or five attempts. None of those attempts eased the tense look on Jared’s face. Finally Jensen’s voice cooperated with, “You know how kittens come into the world?”

“God, Jensen. I’m almost twenty. I’ve had the birds and the bees talk,” Jared huffed. “In fact we’ve done the bees part together.”

“Yes. No. Of course, I… There are some differences in felanoid biology to human,” Jensen blurted out.

“Okay, yeah. I know about turning and the whole weird mating thing,” Jared reminded him.

Jensen was very careful not to let the hurt that he felt show. It wasn’t Jared’s fault that he had been raised to utterly clueless about himself. But it still stung that his beautiful mate thought of their mating as ‘weird’. It was perfect, sacred, to be treasured – not ‘weird.’

“Yes, well, biologically speaking we are very similar to humans in actual… breeding practices.”

“Yeah? And?”

“There are some distinct differences that I had hoped you would be spared from for another year,” Jensen said as gently as he could.

“Differences?” Jared’s voice was starting to sound scared. The sarcastic teenage tone from moments before vanished like candle smoke in the wind.

“Felanoid women cycle monthly, as do human women. But there is also the, the heat cycle.”

“Like animals?” Jared asked.

“Yes,” Jensen confirmed, “or close to it at least.”

“Okay, so what? I should be expecting to cover more shifts at the gallery because the girls are going to be off screwing?”

Jensen shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No, there are drugs for that sort of thing. Birth control, if you will.”

“Well,” Jared said, “I guess that makes sense, and it explains why there isn’t a whole lot of news about it.”

Jensen shrugged. The truth was that there was a whole lot of news about felanoid cycling. Humans could get fucking fascinated by it. Jensen had seen more than one felanoid swipe his or her claws at some nosy reporter. That Jared didn’t know about it was just another reminder of how far from his nature he’d been kept.

“I figured that you might not have known,” Jensen chose to say instead. “With the cycle coming so soon, and you not… well not preparing for it.”

“I thought you said that the women down at the shop were all on birth control. What do I have to prepare for?”

“Jared, I am your alpha. Your mate. While I know that you don’t want to think about it, I’m also, technically your, well, your top. Now, I stand by my promise that I’m more than happy to allow you to sexually experiment with role reversal and whatever else you need. But the fact is that pure instinctual biology is going to drive you to want to, to…”

“Push my ass up in the air and beg you to bone it?” Jared filled in for him. Jensen wasn’t sure which of their faces turned redder at the words. “Seriously, Jensen, all I’m getting from this conversation is a heap of embarrassment and confusion. So if you could just cut to the chase here, I think we’d both be better off.”

“You’re going to go into heat soon,” Jensen blurted out.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You’re going to go…”

“I’m not a girl!” Jared exploded, his face turning stormy.

“I know you’re not, but…”

“No. It isn’t possible,” Jared protested weakly.

Jensen shook his head and reached across the table to cradle Jared’s now larger hand between his own. “I’m sorry. I had hoped that with how screwed up those drugs made your biology that you wouldn’t have to deal with this until next season.”

“Fuck,” Jared swore whole heartedly.

“Look, you can go on birth control. You probably will barely notice the change, and…”

“No!” Jared yelled, yanking his hand away from Jensen’s. “No, no, no.”

“Kitten,” Jensen soothed, coming around the table to crouch beside his mate, “it is perfectly safe for you.”

“Yeah, well I’ve heard that before,” Jared scoffed. “It got me a fucking growth spurt and stretch marks at almost twenty-fucking-years old. It got me bonded for life to a stranger. It got me fucking, fucking backwards and slow about my own biology and life and everything.”

Jensen’s heart ached at the words. “I know,” he said softly.

“No, you really don’t. I thought I was straight, Jensen. My body was so, so foreign to me that I thought I was straight. I was engaged.”

The last sentence out of Jared’s mouth made Jensen see red for a moment. A possessive tendril of jealousy coiled around his spine before he pushed it away. He didn’t want to think about Jared being anybody else’s. Jensen had spent a long time without his mate, and he didn’t like to think that he could have lost Jared.

As imperfect and dampened by sadness as their mating was, Jensen would not trade it for anything. He knew that his mate did not feel the same way, and it made him feel horrible to rejoice in their joining when Jared wished that it had never happened. But he comforted himself with the knowledge that if Jared had known, he would have been drawn to Jensen. They still smelled perfect to each other, and that counted for far more than Jared realized.

“It’s just birth control,” Jensen tried to reason.

“No. You know how I feel about that.”

Yes, Jensen did know how his mate felt about any sort of medication that came from a prescription. If it needed a doctor’s signature, he wasn’t taking it. No shots, no pills, no nothing. His mate had developed a phobia about doctors, and Jensen could only pray that it would lessen before Jared actually needed assistance.

“I understand. But Kitten, you’ll go into heat otherwise.”

Jared stared stubbornly at him, folding his arms across his chest and saying nothing.

It was tempting to point out that Jared wasn’t ready to have children, but Jensen wasn’t about to start that fight. Jared was still trying to figure himself out, making decisions for him was a touchy subject. There were things that he didn’t know about or couldn’t do for himself, but Jensen tried to keep his interventions as minimal as possible.

“I’m not ready to be a father yet,” Jensen said instead. It was partly a lie. Jensen was more than old enough and established enough to be a father. He was happy with Jared, content in a way he hadn’t been before. But his mate was unhappy and adding a child to that would only add more stress to their lives.

“We don’t have to you know, do it,” Jared hissed out.

“I know that I appear to have limitless patience. But when you’re begging me to fuck you, and your heat scent gets up in my nostrils? I’m going to turn into a giant, walking dick,” Jensen told him bluntly.

“So it’s like, pon farr or something?” Jared sounded incredulous at the thought.

Jensen didn’t know what the Hell ‘pon farr’ was, but he just nodded and said, “Yes,” anyway.

“Crap,” Jared muttered.

“Yeah,” Jensen agreed.

“Just so you know, I do not like these biological overrides on my sex life. They suck,” Jared informed him.

“I know,” Jensen commiserated.

“Well, you’d better know. And you’d better get used to the feeling of latex and spermicides,” Jared informed him.

Jensen rocked back on his heels a bit, staring up at his mate in confusion. “What?”

“Condoms don’t work on felanoid dick?”

“No they do, just, I didn’t think that you’d want that,” Jensen admitted.

Jared shrugged. “Well I guess it must be your lucky day. I’d rather have sex with my mate than go see the doctor. Assuming, of course, that you want to have sex. I could just, you know, go lock myself in a room somewhere or whatever it is that pre-pill era werecats did.”

“No, no. I want to,” Jensen assured him. “And there were special rooms built for felanoids trying to avoid the result of their heats. They weren’t always that successful.”

“Fathom that,” Jared deadpanned.

“You’re sure about this?” Jensen asked.

Jared shrugged and played with the hem of his shirt for a moment before answering, “I don’t have much of a choice.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stocking condoms and lube near every available fucking surface was harder and far more expensive than it sounded. But once Jensen let his imagination loose, he could only think about all the places he and his mate might end up once Jared’s heat started.

They were over prepared; they had to be. But Jensen was on his best, better safe than sorry, boy scout behavior. The last thing he wanted was to cause his mate more stress and anxiety.

On the selfish side of things, he was also hoping that maybe, just maybe, Jared would like having sex so much that he’d continue asking for it after his heat cycle finished. An unwanted pregnancy didn’t sound conducive to his end goal. But a warm, concerned mate who was just perfect in bed? Who would want to throw that cat to the couch?

Not that Jensen slept on the couch. His apartment was large and comfortable. Although he had offered the master bedroom to his mate, Jared had been adamant that Jensen take it. As far as he was concerned, Jensen was paying the bills, so Jensen owned the apartment.

Jared took the guest bedroom as his own. While Jensen was invited there for cuddle sessions often enough, he did not have an open invitation. And Jared never visited the master bedroom. He steered clear of it like it held a plague inside of its walls.

This was why Jensen was startled when his mate knocked on his door and poked his head in.

“Jared?”

 

“Can we talk?” Jared asked.

“Of course, just let me get my robe,” Jensen said as he pushed the coverlet down.

“No, here is good,” Jared’s voice was not as steady as it could have been, but his face was determined as he clambered onto the bed beside Jensen. He slithered his flannel pajama clad body under the sheets, and Jensen came close to pinching himself to see if he was dreaming.

Then he remembered that he thought that pinching was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard of for waking up from a dream. If he was hallucinating his mate coming to their bed, then he’d be happy with his temporary insanity.

“We’re not married,” Jared said once he was settled next to Jensen.

“Pardon?”

“We’re not married. We’re mated, I know. But we aren’t married. What if I get pregnant? If I get pregnant and you die and all of your stuff reverts to the pack, me and baby Jensen are going to be left penniless.”

“First of all, my parents would never do that to you. Second of all, you’re my mate. There are laws that govern your inheritance in the event of my untimely demise,” Jensen soothed.

“But it isn’t the same as marriage,” Jared pointed out. “I know. I spent all day reading about it. There have been several instances where the courts made rulings based on human inheritance laws.”

Jensen growled under his breath in frustration. As much as he’d like to wipe Jared’s thought pattern out of existence, remind him that he was worrying about a theoretical future that was not likely to occur, Jared was not wrong. Judges were not as well versed in felanoid law as they were human. There just weren’t as many felanoids to worry about to begin with, and they weren’t held to a separate justice system.

There were just additional laws in effect to make up for specific deficiencies in human law when governing a species with some fundamental differences in its very DNA. Stealing was still stealing, murder was still murder, but family law could get tricky. With few cases making their way to court, judges just weren’t as good at ruling on felanoid based laws.

Sure there were appeals filed and rulings corrected, but that took time and money. If a mate was left without his or her rightful inheritance, there was every chance that he or she wouldn’t be able to afford the lawyer fees and court motions.

“I want to get married,” Jared stated firmly.

“No you don’t,” Jensen automatically denied.

“Are you telling me what I want now?”

Jensen sighed and rubbed his eyes. “No, but I know that this isn’t the sort of decision that a person should rush into. You aren’t happy with how our mating went. Why would you want to rush into our marriage?”

“Do you not want to marry me?” Jared’s tone of voice went from pissed off to wounded and worried.

“I’d love to marry you,” Jensen corrected, “but I’m not the one who needs time to figure this all out. You’re young and were raised human. Marriage means a lot more to you than it ever will to me. You didn’t have a fully informed choice with our mating. I want you to have the wedding and marriage you want.”

“What if I get pregnant though?” Jared asked.

“Then I’ll marry you if it’ll make you feel better. I’m not saying, ‘no.’ I’m saying that there is no need to rush into this.”

“So if you’re not saying, ‘no,’ are you saying, ‘yes’?”

“Of course I’m saying, ‘yes.’ I love you.”

Jared bit his lip and seemed to consider Jensen’s words for a moment. “So we could be engaged then?”

“Do you want to be engaged?”

Jared looked down at the coverlet, but nodded his head. “Yeah, I do. I mean, I was engaged before, and it was nice. And I want to be able to show my support to us too, you know?”

Jensen wasn’t sure how a couple of rings and referring to his mate as his fiancée was going to make all that much of a difference, but then again he wasn’t the one worried about Jared’s level of support in their relationship.

“We can be engaged,” he told his mate softly.

“Good,” Jared said as he scooted closer to Jensen. “You mind if I sleep here tonight?”

The thought made Jensen smile, and he didn’t bother hiding it. “Of course not.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The jeweler’s shop was pleasant and small. Jensen liked it for the mere fact that he had always shopped at it. He felt comfortable inside of its walls, and it sold rings just like any other jewelry shop did. He didn’t much care what sort of selection they had. Just that he got a good, reliable product for them.

Jared though, Jared was intense about his shopping. The five gold rings that he had narrowed down his selection on all looked about the same to Jensen. They were gold. They were bands. It wasn’t that exciting.

The only contribution that he had made to the whole experience was a phone call ahead of their arrival instructing the salesman to take the prices off of the men’s wedding bands. Jensen wanted Jared to pick out what he liked the most, not what was most economically feasible.

“This would look good on you,” Jared said, holding up a white gold band. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it’s lovely,” Jensen responded with a genuine smile. He could care less about the rings, but they were making Jared happy and that, in turn, made Jared’s mate happy.

“You’re sure that I can pick yours out? I don’t want to saddle you with something you don’t like for the rest of your life,” Jared fretted as he put the ring down and picked up another one.

“I truly don’t care,” Jensen confirmed. “I like them all. You pick out the ones you like. Matching or not, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“You’re going to regret that decision one day,” Jared teased.

Jensen only smiled in response. He highly doubted that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Uh. Uh. Unh,” Jared’s voice panted out in a regular staccato. The scent of his heat was filling the apartment, and all Jensen could do was sit on their couch and wait.

“Hnngh,” Jared whined. The bed creaked as he shifted his bulk, and Jensen cursed his sensitive hearing for informing him that Jared had popped open one of the tubes of lube that they had purchased.

Desperate to keep from doing something foolhardy, Jensen stalked out to the kitchen and started washing dishes. The running water didn’t eliminate the sex sounds coming from his mate’s bedroom, but it did give him something else to focus on.

His cock was hard, pushing insistently against the seam of the sweatpants he was wearing. Soon, soon Jared would get to the point where he needed his alpha to come to him. But Jensen would be damned if he pressed the point.

He could wait. He would wait.

And it would be worth it.


End file.
